The Spider Pt. 40

Thanks to M for believing in me. It's been wonderful being your friend all these years, wonderful to think there's more to come.

The arrow split the apple perfectly down the middle.

Anna stepped back, relaxing her bow. She reached for another arrow from the quiver at her waist, then thought better of it. It might break during target practice and she only had so many of them.

She knew she would need every one of them very soon.

"You are very good at that," May said quietly behind her, handing Anna a cup of hot cider.

"It's kind of what I do," Anna said simply. She took a sip of the cider. "Anyway, this isn't exactly an ordinary bow or anything. I didn't make these arrows, either. Regardless, I'm a good shot."

"Not for me," the older woman said. "I have always been a grower—a gardener, a mother. I was a teacher a long time ago. I have always made things grow."

"That sounds nice," Anna said, looking up into the sky. Nothing there yet. Soon.

"What did you discover last night?"

Anna turned and regarded May.

"She will be here very soon," Anna said. "She will destroy everything here, and I think she can do it. She will probably come today."

"Ah."

"I'm sorry."

"No. I always knew it could happen. He has become evil and not... human. Not a man anymore. It doesn't surprise me to think he'd send evil here to destroy this place also."

May walked over to Anna and reached up with strong and leathery fingers to touch Anna's face gently.

"Go back home, Anna," she whispered. "You can open the windows again. I've healed you all the ways. You can go home and be safe."

"There's nowhere safe for me. But I'll take you back. Come with me. You don't have to die here."

May shook her head sadly. She was resigned.

"No, Spider. There is nothing for me back on Earth. My place is here with my trees, and I'll stay and fight with them as long as I can."

"I won't let her kill me."

"No."

Anna sat down on the soft grass and blew on her cider. She took a sip.

"But your garden, May. Maybe we can save that if we hide."

"Everything dies, Spider. But life always continues. Already my trees are spreading around this dying planet, slowly. There are other gardens, trees reaching out to other trees, forming bonds, loving each other. Under the ground, where you can't see? The fungus—the mushrooms—are reaching out to themselves, carrying life and hope from the roots. It can't be stopped by any evil."

May waved her hand at the distance.

"The miserable creatures that live here are dying off, and my trees will replace them as they do. A million years from now there will be life here. This garden has done what it needed to."

Anna looked around the garden at enormous trees that rose as high as the eye could see from soft grass.

"Sad to think that we will be the last two people to see it."

May laughed gently.

"No, no, Spider," she chided. "It is in no way sad that human eyes won't be seeing any of this. I want you to make me one promise."

"What?"

"If you get a chance to, kill him. Kill him and never come back. Don't let any other people come here. No one. Not ever. Not even you. OK?"

* * * * *

The Hawk looked over her army: dozens of Red Eyes in the ugly sun, wings fluttering, and tails lashing in anticipation of a kill. She could see their venomous saliva dripping down their jaws.

She hated them.

She opened up one of her buckets and looked inside. The Styrofoam had dissolved in there. Perfect.

She summoned one of the disgusting creatures forward and poured the excess fluid from the bucket on its head. It flowed out slowly, thick and gelatinous.

The Red Eyes growled nervously as the fluid dripped down its torso.

The Hawk's eyes narrowed as she lit a single match and flung it at the creature.

It burst into flames instantly, hot jets spewing oily black smoke into the sky. The Red Eyes screamed in pain, its tail lashing mindlessly as it clawed at the burning jelly on its face.

The Hawk watched it collapse onto the black sand screaming in agony, choking on the smoke, clawing helplessly at the fire glued to its skin.

She watched it choke out its last cry.

Good, she thought. I'm going to rain fire on that garden. I'm going to burn everything there right down to nothing.

* * * * *

Anna dipped the tip of her arrow into the pine tar, then into her fire. The tar burst into flames.

May leaned back from the flame.

"Will it work?"

Anna blew on the burning tar as hard as she could.

It didn't go out.

"I think so."

The trees blew as if there were wind above their heads. But there wasn't any wind, as usual.

"The fire... it scares the trees," May said.

"It should."

"Why do you need that?"

"She has been soaking Styrofoam plates in gasoline over there. That makes a crude napalm. Do you know what napalm is?"

"I do."

"Then you know what's heading our way."

"And what are you going to do with that?" May asked, pointing at the burning arrow.

"Fight fire with fire."

* * * * *

They didn't have to wait long. Still, even Anna was stunned at how many Red Eyes there were out there.

The Hawk had them lined up in columns, kneeling in rows. The dumb beasts grunted and shrieked, drooling at the kill. The Hawk strode among them, her eyes narrowed at the garden, looking for weaknesses, looking where to strike.

May was shaking beside Anna.

Anna forced a smile, taking May's hand in hers.

"It's OK," she said softly. "Your ex-boyfriend is a real problem, that's for sure. But he also has problems of his own, and one of his problems is with the women he makes work for them. They aren't, uh... very good at this stuff, basically—whatever is left of them after he gets done with them isn't much. Powerful, but unimaginative, for the most part. They seem to think that their strength is enough."

May attempted weakly to return the smile.

Anna turned to her.

"I'll get a couple shots at her, and that might be enough. She's tormented and stupid because of him. At this point, she's only what he made her be, and he's fucking crazy,right? She'll make mistakes and I might be able to just kill her outright. But you should go back."

"There's no back. There's no forward. How can you kill her? With arrows? Can they go that far?"

Anna laughed.

"No, ordinarily not," she said. "These aren't normal arrows, though. Not dead wood. Like I said, the trees made these arrows for me. These arrows will find her because the trees want to kill her evil just as much as I do."

They watched as the Hawk came to a stop. The Hawk just stood there looking at the trees, her wings expanding and contracting slowly.

"What is she waiting for," May whispered.

* * * * *

Maybe death can be my release, the Hawk was thinking.

At some point I will be of no further use to him, and death can be my reward.

A dim memory of the woman she had been came up, unwanted, unsummoned. She had come to hate these memories. She hated the man who had killed so much of her but hadn't cared enough to kill the memories.

Or maybe he wanted them to hurt me, she realized. He left just enough of me to hurt myself. To torture me from within.

It doesn't matter. I am a perfect killing machine.

She has her little knife. I will take that from her and rip her to pieces. I'll kill the other woman, too. Burn the trees. Poison the soil.

Keep killing until death frees me.

* * * * *

When the attack came, it was sudden and without warning. One second Anna and the Hawk were looking at each other darkly from across the burning sands, and the next the trees exploded with shrieking and darkness.

She must have sent some around from the rear, Anna realized. She stepped back into the foliage.

She looked up and saw the dark bodies of what had to be a few dozen Red Eyes thrashing violently in the thick canopy overhead. She heard the lashing of their barbed tails, the shrieks, heard their screams as long thorns slashed into their thick skins and pierced their eyes.

May yelled something in Korean and ran off into the growth.

Anna wondered what she thought she was going to do.

Soon thick black blood started dripping down, pattering against the lower leaves like so much ugly rain. The thrashing slowed; the screams grew quieter.

This is only distraction, Anna knew.

She stepped back into the clearing and saw the Hawk in the distance, holding a red can high above the kneeling Red Eyes at her feet. Anna watched as she poured the fluid onto one animal and moved to the next.

Anna notched an arrow against the string and ignited it.

You think you are too far away from me, she thought. You stupid bitch.

You aren't.

Anna could see the Hawk's eyes widen in surprise as the arrow pierced the gasoline can.

The explosion engulfed her. Anna watched as the Hawk dropped to the sand, screaming, rolling, trying desperately to stop the burning.

A few dozen of the gasoline-soaked Red Eyes leapt into the air, flew up, fanned out. Anna caught one with a burning arrow; it screamed and burst into flames but kept flying towards the garden.

Shit, she thought.

The Hawk staggered to her feet in the distance.

Anna's next arrow caught the Hawk in the face, slashing across her eye. The next arrow bounced harmlessly off her arm as she covered her eyes.

That hurt you, didn't it?

But Anna knew her arrows would not hurt the Hawk much, even if she put out an eye. Her next arrows were sent at the only place she could think the Hawk might be vulnerable: the thin webbing of her wings. Wings can't be too heavy or a creature can't fly, Anna knew. Maybe a few arrows there will ground this bitch, or at least slow her down in the air, and I can catch her there.

She put a few arrows through that webbing until the Hawk scurried behind a hastily assembled wall of Red Eyes. Anna's arrows ricocheted off the brutes, accomplishing nothing.

Got you running, bitch.

The gasoline-soaked Red Eyes hit the trees and met the same fate as the others. They screamed and thrashed in the branches, bleeding out as sharp thorns dug into their tough flesh. Their screams faded as the branches smothered them.

But Anna knew the danger was their bodies, alive or not.

In the distance, she saw more Red Eyes fly into the air one after the other, each holding a small vessel in their hands.

Soon the sky was filled with them as they circled over the garden, blotting out the red sun. The black blood continued to drip from the dead ones up in the trees, falling like some kind of grotesque rain onto fresh green leaves.

Anna saw the Hawk struggle to take flight in the distance.

Fuck, she thought.

* * * * *

The Hawk hissed as she took to the air slowly, feebly.

That bitch, she was thinking. She fucking hurt me.

She flew high enough that no arrows could reach her. Safe for now.

She lit her torch.

Slowly, she flew from one Red Eyes to the next, lighting the jellied gasoline in their buckets. After she had ignited the first dozen, she yelled out a command.

As one, the Red Eyes poured the napalm down from the sky, strings of burning fire raining down onto the garden below. The napalm stuck to the leaves, the branches, dripping down onto the trunks.

Can trees scream? The Hawk wondered.

Let's find out.

The next Red Eyes poured out their napalm as well. Black smoke began to stream upwards from the burning trees, greasy and thick.

The gasoline-soaked corpses of the first Red Eyes started to explode.

The Hawk struggled for breath as she put the torch to the jellied gasoline.

Napalm rained down.

* * * * *

May threw a bucket of water on the trunk of a burning tree. The napalm just floated away on top of the water, burning more in its path.

"That's not going to work," Anna said from behind her. "Water won't extinguish it."

"What can we do?"

"We can leave," Anna said grimly. "Everything here is going to burn. We can't stop it."

"I won't leave!"

Anna screamed, pulling her arm into herself.

"Shit!"

"What happened?"

Anna wrapped her arm in her shirt.

"Some got on me," she hissed. "Fuck, it burns. Fuck. There will be more. Look up."

May did.

"The leaves are burning away; the smaller branches, too. Soon the napalm will be on our heads. We can't breathe this smoke for long. And if that wasn't enough, soon she'll have her Red Eyes come down and kill us if we haven't already been killed. There's nothing we can do! There's no way to win here, May... and napalm is a very bad way to die."

May just smiled.

"This all will burn, yes. But life will continue to grow on this world. Because of me. Yes?"

Anna nodded.

"I'm the mother. I'm the mother of this world. The old things are all dying here, and my world will grow in its place. You understand?"

"Yes."

May smiled.

"Good. I'm the earth mother. My body will be with my child. I will not leave."

In the distance, Anna could hear heavy bodies crashing through dead branches, feet hitting soft earth.

"They are here now," she whispered.

"Go, Anna," May said. "Fight another day. You can't win here. Not even you."

Soon the garden was filled with screams: of Red Eyes, of the trees as they put up their last fight, of hateful joy as the animals tore the trees apart. Anna notched an arrow into her bow as she spun around.

The sound of dry, breaking wood split the air around them. May coughed as the black smoke writhed across the garden.

We won't last a lot longer here, Anna knew.

"Let's see that knife," the Hawk said quietly from behind her.

Anna spun around, putting distance between herself and the Hawk. She let her arrow fly, but the Hawk swatted it effortlessly out of the air.

The Hawk fixed her eyes on Anna, a cruel smile on her face.

"I guess I didn't get your eye," Anna said.

"No, you did not."

"I will, though."

The Hawk laughed.

"With what, you cunt? Your stupid little knife? Do you still have that?"

Anna launched another arrow at the Hawk, who this time let it bounce harmlessly off her shoulder.

The Hawk's flesh smoldered with dripping napalm. She didn't seem to notice it.

"I still have the knife."

May cried out in pain as the fire dripped onto her.

"I almost forgot about you!" the Hawk said, lunging at May in a flash, wrapping her clawed hand around May's upper arm. "It really is a shame that it's come to this... there's not much left of me, but what little there is? That part kind of wishes I didn't have to do this to you."

May said nothing.

The Hawk shook her by the arm.

"What did I overhear you saying? You are the mother of this world or something?"

The Hawk wrapped her hand around May's neck.

"I guess we can try this," she said. "Probably only really works in the movies. But if you come over here and let me kill you, Spider, I'll let Earth Mother here live. Her life for yours. You have my promise. I didn't come here to kill anyone but you. I don't give a shit about the rest of this."

"No," May said.

"I'll come to you," Anna said. She held up the knife, which looked small and insignificant. "I'll come to you."

The wind blew the smoke across where Anna stood.

And then she was gone.

"Shit," the Hawk said. She crushed May's neck, feeling the older woman kick once, twice, a third time.

The Hawk dropped her lifeless body to the ground.